See KING.
Source: New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Government system based on a single person as a reference. Ordinarily the monarch is called king or emperor, and may be absolute if he has no limitations in the exercise of his power, or constitutional if his powers are conditioned by a parliament or a constitution.
Against the old systems of looking at monarchies as coming from God and coining the expression “king by the grace of God” on coins, in times after the parliamentarism of the 19th century, the monarchy was made to proceed from popular acceptance and representation. . No king in good logic is by inheritance, but by the acceptance of the society over which he is going to rule.
The Church has nothing to say about the best system of government, since all are equally acceptable as long as their promoters comply with the duty of promoting the common good as their primary objective. But she does have to say about the origin of authority and respect for natural rights as the source of all power of some men over others.
The monarchical expressions or the doctrines about kings that can be derived from some biblical texts, which are usually effects of the cultures in which each concrete form arose, have no significant value.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
(David, Samuel, Jotham, tribal federation, messianism). The federation of tribes of Israel was ineffective in the face of the organized threat from surrounding peoples, especially from the Philistines on the coast (between present-day Tel Aviv and Gaza), who had built a strong state apparatus at the service of war. A federation of free men, without adequate military structures, cannot resist if there are imperialist-type peoples on its side. Therefore, according to the logic of history, in order to maintain their independence, the federates had to cede part of their authority, creating a unified monarchy, despite the criticism of some prophets and sages.
(1) Anti-monarchical criticism. As Jotham* was able to beautifully say, at first the role of the king could be avoided: the life of the tribes was expressed with deep similes of good trees (vine, olive, fig), which bear fruit and enrich everyone; the monarchy with its superior classes was conceived as a parasitic bramble that lives on the other trees of the forest, so it had to be avoided (cf. Je 9,7-15). In this line, Samuel, prophet and seer, continues presenting the burdens of the monarchy: “This will be the right of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and use them in his chariot and his horses; he will appoint them to his service chiefs of a thousand and chiefs of fifty, also using them to till his farmland, reap his crops and make his weapons of war… he will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks and bakers. He will seize your fields, your vineyards and your best olive groves and give them to his servants. He will also require a tithe of your fields and your vineyards and your best olive groves and will give them to his ministers” (1 Sam 8:11-16). Despite this warning, the people wanted a king and, according to the tradition that is at the bottom of the text, God said to Samuel: “They do not reject you, but they reject me, so that I will not reign over them.” (1 Sam 8.7). God was a guarantee of unity and defense and now it becomes somewhat unnecessary: in the place of the fraternal God, who unifies and saves the people, the dictator king appears as a sign of social and military concentration, guaranteeing Israelite stability, but in the of the other peoples of the earth (1 Sam 8,6). The professional army and the class division are born, with an administrative stratum (servants of the king) and another military stratum (troop commanders, commanders of the battle tanks) that lives from the work and taxes of others, needing an economic-social surplus value. . This happened around 1000 BC There was a brief trial first, under the leadership of Saul*, but the real monarchy began with David. Certainly, the Israelites continued to believe in a superior God who defended and directed them (who was their true King). But, at the same time, they thought that this God could be related to a kingdom (a state) and a national temple (the one in Jerusalem). These two pieces of information (kingdom and temple) were nothing new, since the surrounding peoples (Babylonians, Egyptians, Moabites, Phoenicians, etc.) had also sought them out. In this way, the Israelites became like other peoples. In this context we can distinguish, basing ourselves on the text of the Bible, rather than on archaeological and historical data, which are quite sparse, the following three moments, which appear in detail in the books of 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles .
(!) Kingdom. David and Solomon (1000 to 900 BC). At the beginning of the kingdom of Israel is David*, a kind of military leader or warlord of the tribe of Judah, in the southern area (around Hebron), to later become a charismatic king over all the tribes. David was the first to unify the land of Palestine under an Israeli command and his figure was later idealized, so that it appears in later tradition as a sign of the presence of God, a guarantee of peace, the beginning of a family from which he must Messiah born. After him reigned his son Solomon *, who maintained the empire of his father David, building under his authority the temple of Jerusalem, which will later become (to this day) a sign of God’s presence for Israel. This new social model brought certain advantages: the Israelites overcame the risk of a permanent military occupation, which at that time would have meant the extinction of the people, and they conquered almost all of Palestine, extending their influence throughout the East. Furthermore, some southern groups (Judah and Benjamin) interpreted the monarchy as a sacred sign: God himself was King and protector of the people through David and his sons, who thus received messianic traits, according to a widespread vision among the nations. and empires that deified their kings. Despite its flaws, the monarchical model contributed two positive elements: an increase in national unity (although centered on Jerusalem and marginalizing the northern tribes) and a messianic experience, mediated through a king, a special man in whom God expresses his saving action.
(3) Division of kingdoms (from 900 to 721 BC). Significantly, many Israelites felt that the sacred monarchy of David and Solomon was contrary to the direct presence of God (as the only King) and further thought that it was opposed to the traditions of freedom of the Hebrews (who wanted no king but God). The northern tribes, formed mainly by the groups of Ephraim and Manasseh, rejected the monarchy of Jerusalem (of the house of David), in order to maintain their identity and independence. Thus they created a special kingdom, called “Israel” (in the limited sense of the word, since the southern tribes were also Israelites), which had its capital in Samaria and thus the Israelites had two kingdoms: one centered in Samaria and another in Jerusalem. They were turbulent years, which served to consolidate ancient traditions. At this time the first great prophets arose, especially in the Northern Kingdom, with Elijah* and Elisha, and later with Amos* and Hosea*. They discovered the action of God as a presence of love and as an urgency of justice. But history was very hard and in 721 BC the Assyrians conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom forever, with Samaria and Galilee.
(4) The Jewish kingdom of Jerusalem (721 586 C.). After 721 BC only the southern kingdom remained, called Judea (so that from now on the names of Jew and Israelite tend to be identified). That kingdom was centered around Jerusalem and organized as a small monarchy, maintained by David’s descendants. At that time great prophets arose, such as Isaiah* and Jeremiah* who developed the most powerful religious experiences of Israel and who constitute one of the spiritual summits of human history. But the monarchy of the Jewish kings, descendants of David, was only a stage in the Israelite process. In 587 BC, the Babylonians conquered and destroyed Jerusalem, taking many of its inhabitants captive and destroying the temple. According to this, the time of the independent national monarchy has occupied only a very short period of the history of the Jews, who have lived ever since without a land or a nation of their own. In any case, many later Jews have been tempted to recover the monarchy and the nation, rebuilding the kingdom: the Maccabees* (from the years 176 to 150 BC), the rebels of 67-70 AD (around the time of Jesus ) and the current Zionists (that is, the defenders of the current State of Israel, in almost permanent conflict with the Muslims of the area).
Cf. J. BRIGHT, The History of Israel, Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao 2003; S. HERMANN, History of Israel, at the time of the Old Testament, Follow me, Salamanca í 979; M. NOTH, History of Israel, Garriga, Barcelona 1966; JA SOGGIN, New history of Israel: from the origins to Bar Kokba, Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao 1997.
PIKAZA, Javier, Dictionary of the Bible. History and Word, Divine Word, Navarra 2007
Source: Dictionary of Bible History and Word
SUMMARY: I. Monotheism as a political problem (E. Peterson): reception and criticism.-II. The intradivine monarchy (the Father as source, origin and principle.-III. Monarchy and relational reciprocity.
The term “monarchy” (monos arkhé, a single principle), in addition to other uses or meanings, frequently appears in the theological terminology of the first centuries as an integral part of the doctrine of God and Trinitarian theology; the term even became the banner of a modalistic or monarchian interpretation of divine reality (“monarchiam tenemus”) that wanted to maintain at all costs the monotheistic tradition of the OT ‘without renouncing the language of the NT about God the Father, Son and E. Holy. As these aspects are dealt with elsewhere, only those listed below will be considered here.
I. Monotheism as a political problem (E. Peterson): reception and criticism
E. Peterson (1890-1960), a scholar of Christian origins, a Protestant theologian who converted to Catholicism in 1930, published an article in 1935 in which he reworked some previous work on divine monarchy. Few then perceived the connections of this historical-theological study on ancient texts with the political-ecclesiastical background of the moment. The references were certainly not explicit, but in code, wrapped in scholarly analysis by specialists; they were, however, undeniable in that context of relations between Church, theology and nationalism. For…